Excuses for Poor Dental Marketing Results

I’ve probably heard every possible reason for why dental practices fail. There have been only a few occasions when I agreed that the failure was beyond the dentist’s control. Generally, those were due to forces that couldn’t have been foreseen. Serious illness tops that list, followed by unexpected economic downturns in small markets. After that, those so-called reasons were basically excuses for poor dental marketing approaches. I’ll be back after the break to run down those excuses and explain why not one of them is valid. Stay tuned.

– Thanks for watching the Patient Attraction Podcast™.

– I’m Colin Receveur, CEO of SmartBox.

– Overall in the U.S., less than 2 percent of dental practices fail.

– That’s an encouraging number, or should be – but there’s a problem.

– Dental practices can limp along in failure mode for a lot of years without closing their doors.

– Those practices see and treat patients, pay the bills, and slog along year after year.

– Raises happen once in a great while; equipment wears out and is rarely replaced.

– It’s slow-motion failure.

– And those dentists have a raft of excuses for why they’re not doing better.

– I’m going to run down the top 3 excuses dentists use to explain why their practices are dying by inches.

– One of the most common excuses is that prospects in their market don’t want to pay for anything.

– Yeah, that’s true of many prospects.

– But a lot of those people don’t have dental insurance or the means to pay out of pocket.

– And it’s certainly not true of the other prospects who do have the ability and willingness to pay.

– The dentists who complain about low-value cases are usually marketing to those people by advertising low price, discounts, and specials.

– They’re doing what their competitors are doing, which is the same thing dentists have been doing for decades.

– Basically, those dentists are getting what they ask for.

– Another frequent excuse from dentists is that the patients they’re getting have no loyalty to the practice.

– That one always amazes me.

– Dollar General stores’ entire value proposition is low price.

– Do you think that Dollar General stores really expect customer loyalty?

– Those customers will go wherever the price is lower.

– Dentists who advertise on price and discounts are extremely lucky to get any patients who are loyal.

– That’s because they haven’t given their prospects any reason to think about establishing a long-term relationship with the practice.

– And finally, dentists complain about the competition in their area.

– Stop and think for a second.

– Dentists are marketing exactly the same as everybody else in their market.

– They’re all competing for the same limited pool of low-value prospects.